Kunf Fu Panda is back for it’s third and final installment and it’s geared up to make history! The Dreamworks franchise starring Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Angelina Jolie and Lucy Liu has made Spielberg ‘s studio millions. So much that in 2012, they created Oriental Dreamworks, with offices and staff in China! I had the pleasure of attending an exclusive screening, tour of dreamworks and one on one interviews with the animators and directors of the film and they dropped a few nuggets that I’d love to share with you! The most exciting one of course, being that for the first time in history, an animated film will be released simultaneously on two different continents, on the same day and in two different languages! Yes, Kung Fu Panda 3 is in both Chinese and English. The animators took such care to detail that they even changed the way the cartoon characters look when they talk, so the words match up perfectly! Amazing!

Here’s a few things I learned:

*It takes 5 years for the studio to create 1 animated film, yup 5 years.

*There are about 40 animators working on 1 film at any given time

*It takes 40 hours of work, just to create and edit 3 seconds of film

*The first step is creating the script, then the actors come in and record the dialouge way before they even begin making the movie. (You thought they were speaking in to a mic to match the characters on screen right? You were wrong!)

*The animators record the actors performances with video cameras and use that as a reference in order to create the cartoon character

*There is an actual lighting team, just like on a movie set, there is a team that looks at the animation on screen and comes in and lights it up (trust me it makes a huge difference in appearance)

*This is the last installment of Kung Fu Panda, but they are creating How to Train A Dragon 3 right now!

Overall, animation is an incredibly complex process. Imagine being pregnant for 5 years, before you can give birth to your baby! Then you have to give it up to the world and move on to the next one! My goodness! Much respect to the team at Dreamworks!